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International statement on the Second Anniversary of the Chemical Attack of the Ghouta

Two entire years have passed since the chemical attack that killed around 1500 people in the Ghouta region of Syria took place. Not only has justice not been served, but the perpetrator of this crime has continued his daily killings. Rather than holding him accountable for his crimes, a deal between Russians and Americans has practically granted him license to kill by other means: the Assad regime was to deliver his arsenal of chemical weapons in exchange for total immunity.

The Americans did not have any problem with the Assad clique murdering Syrians for more than two and half years up until then, but they objected to the breach of their own red lines. Such a despicable deal is on a par with the chemical crime. Had the world we are living in been less cynical, global newspapers and media outlets would have been competing in condemning this as a heinous crime too against the Syrians and the entire world. Now it has even become an even bigger crime after the regime has continued its use of chemical weapons, like in his recent attack on Daria, and in many other areas of the country before that. It is impossible to believe that the global most influential powers that have struck the deal don’t know about all these new crimes.

This is to say that the grandees of this world have decided to protect the public murderer in Syria as long as he only kill Syrians. These imperialist powers are partners of the Assad regime in engineering the Syrian bloodbath and in the management of the crisis in such a way that it doesn’t end the killing nor harm their strategic interests or those of their regional partners, Israel first and foremost, followed by Iran.

The moral and political fiasco that followed the chemical massacre had a direct role in the sudden rise of the fascist formation known as ISIL or Da’esh, which today occupies large swaths of Syria and Iraq. Da’esh existed before the Ghouta massacre, but the international reaction towards the latter, more than its occurrence, was the real catalyst for this group. Such nihilist entities thrive in devastated local communities, and equaly in a devastated political, legal, and ethical global setting, that cannot be trusted or sought for for protection. In Syria both conditions had been present since the outbreak of the revolution, but became self-evident after the despicable deal.

Faced not only with a murderous regime that has never considered any political settlement with its citizens, an international order that is not less criminal, fascist formations with formidable criminal capabilities like Da’esh and the Nusra Front, the Syrians have also had to confront a global left that stands with the regime or simply opposes their struggle in the same degree to which it remaines ignorant of it. Syrians are being punished for having been isolated from the world for over four decades, and because of the lies about the regime’s anti-imperialist and modernist credentials.

The Syrian regime does not oppose imperialism, i.e. global authoritarianism, and is in fact a sub-contractor working for it since the mid 1970s at the expense of the Palestinians, the Lebanese, and the Syrians first and foremost. Its modernity is the modernity of material things not the modernity of relationships, rights, and values. The most important of all ’things” is the modern appearance of Bashar Al-Assad and his wife. But we as emancipatory leftists do not see any differences between suit-and-tie fascists and bearded fascists, or between killing with barrel bombs, chemical weapons, and through prison torture, on the one hand, and Da’esh‘s murderswith knifes or defenestration, on the other. What world is this that derives its standards from two empty ideologies which solely Western bourgeoisie is keen on?

It is thanks to the immunity that has been granted to the public Killer, and the global bourgeoisie‘schoicejust to highlight Da’eshe’s dramatic crimes while ignoring those ofAssad – far larger in scale though less spectacular – that the Assad regime could go ahead and kill 112 civilians in Douma recently, in the same region where the chemical Massacre had been perpetrated on August 16th 2013. More than 500 people have also been injured when the thuggish regime‘s jet fighters attacked the popular vegetable street market there.

While we express our solidarity with the Syrians in their long and arduous struggle, and call for World solidarity with them and respect for their endeavor, we also call for the lifting of the political, legal, and media siege this struggle is suffering of. We denounce the tripartite criminal partners in the killing of the Syrian people: Imperialism, Assad, and Da’esh, plus all their junior partners as well as their supporters, and the numerous false news reporters, whether of the left or the right.